But even if you happen to be perfect at figuring out which beliefs are incorrect, this is still a bad idea. If I’m trying to figure out whether to officially adopt some belief as part of my thinking, I’ll calculate my expected social cost of holding the belief using the probability that it’s incorrect times the penalty in the case where it’s incorrect. So even punishing only the incorrect beliefs will counterfactually decrease the rate of people holding unusual beliefs.
This argument seems to assume, contra the first sentence, that I am coming down on the side of the received opinion each time, rather than on the side of the correct opinion.
Let’s say I have an idea X which happens to be correct, although I only think it’s correct with 80% probability. I believe that if idea X is incorrect, and I share it, I will be burned at the stake. So I keep idea X, a correct idea, to myself in order to avoid censure. It so happens that if I had shared idea X, the person in charge of handing out punishments would not have punished me because X happens to be a correct idea. But I had no way of knowing that for certain in advance.
Does that answer your question? I’m not sure I understand your objection.
Ahh. That works if you allow ‘not holding a belief either way’ as an option. If you punish failing to believe the true thing as well then that problem is avoided.
This argument seems to assume, contra the first sentence, that I am coming down on the side of the received opinion each time, rather than on the side of the correct opinion.
Let’s say I have an idea X which happens to be correct, although I only think it’s correct with 80% probability. I believe that if idea X is incorrect, and I share it, I will be burned at the stake. So I keep idea X, a correct idea, to myself in order to avoid censure. It so happens that if I had shared idea X, the person in charge of handing out punishments would not have punished me because X happens to be a correct idea. But I had no way of knowing that for certain in advance.
Does that answer your question? I’m not sure I understand your objection.
Ahh. That works if you allow ‘not holding a belief either way’ as an option. If you punish failing to believe the true thing as well then that problem is avoided.
Yep. People typically don’t receive social punishments for agreeing with the group even when the group ends up being wrong.